Langue et disparités de statut économique au Québec : 1970 et 1980

The author found that the wage gap between unilingual and bilingual Anglophone and bilingual Francophone men and unilingual Francophone men, although still significant, decreased in the 1970s. The wage gap between unilingual Anglophone men and unilingual Francophone men dropped from 59 percent to 22 percent; and the wage gap decreased from 74 percent to 36 percent and from 43 percent to 30 percent respectively between unilingual Francophone and bilingual Anglophone and bilingual Francophone men. The author found that the differences in average incomes between linguistic groups may have been due to discrepancies in non-linguistic factors such as educational attainment. For example, he found that 37.8 percent of Anglophone men in 1981 had a university degree, while only 7.4 percent of unilingual Francophone men had a university degree. One conclusion that the author draws from his survey was that a knowledge of English, which was very profitable for Quebec workers in 1970, was no longer profitable in 1980. In general, English was only profitable if the individual occupied a position of upper or middle white collar management in sectors serving the non-Quebec market for goods or services (including management services provided by pan-Canadian head offices located in Montreal).